UKC

Looking for any readings/poems about climbing - suitable for a funeral. Thanks in advance 

One of the finest poems on climbing that has just the right elegiac tone - it was written after he'd lost a leg in the Great War - is 'I Hold the Heights' by Geoffrey Winthrop Young. 

Here are the first and last verses (middle verse omitted). I think all you need.

I have not lost the magic of long days,
I live them, dream them still
Still I am a master of the starry ways,
And freeman of the hills;
Shattered my glass, ere half the sands had run.
I hold the heights, I hold the heights, I won.

What if I live no more those kingly days?
Their night sleeps with me still.
I dream my feet upon the starry ways;
My heart rests in the hill.
I may not grudge, the little left undone.
I hold the heights, I keep the dreams I won.

So much bettet than I expected!

Many years ago 'To the Wild Hills!' by Kathleen Raine was read at the funeral of one of my old club members who'd died on Ben Nevis. I wasn't there but I read it later in the journal. As a hill person it does resonate with me. Raine was once a close friend of Gavin Maxwell.

That's very moving Gordon

Thank you for your prompt response, this is very moving and we haven’t come across it in our searches online.

Not a poem but the last few paragraphs of WH Murray describing their thoughts descending from their first winter traverse of tower ridge has some really lovely words....and other parts of the book also...

“There have been joys too great to be described in words, and there have been griefs upon which I have dared not dwell.  Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are naught without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a life time.  Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what might be the end”                                                                                Edward Whymper – Scrambles among the Alps

This seems to fit

When I am dead

And this strange spark of life that in me lies

Is fled to join the great white core of life

That surely flames beyond eternities,

And all I ever thought of as myself

Is mouldering to dust and cold death ash,

This pride of nerve and muscle – merest dross,

This joy of brain and eye and touch but trash,

Bury me not, I pray thee

In the dark earth where there comes not any ray

Of light or warmth or aught that make life dear;

But take my whitened bones far, far away

Out of the hum and turmoil of the town,

Find me a wind-swept boulder for a bier

And on it lay me down

Where far beneath drops sheer the rocky ridge

Down to the gloomy valley, and the streams

Fall foaming white against black beetling rocks:

Where the sun’s kindly radiance seldom gleams:

Where some tall peak, defiant, steadfast mocks

The passing gods: and all the ways of men

Forgotten.

So I may know

Even in that death which comes to everything

The swiftly silent swish of hurrying snow;

The lash of rain; the savage bellowing

Of stags; the bitter keen-knife-edge embrace of the rushing

Wind: and the still tremulous dawn

Will touch the eyeless sockets of my face;

And I shall see the sunset and anon

Shall know the velvet kindness of the night

And see the stars.

Hugh A Barrie

(died in a blizzard with Thomas Baird in January 1928)